"Eduland" list of sims to visit

[Kyoko]

In RA yesterday an interest was expressed in visiting some of the potential members of the new Educational area on the SL grid. This list is a fair sample of our potential neighbors. None of the MOVE Team members has the time right now to lead tours, due to RL and SL teaching and meeting obligations (I have two meetings tomorrow. Others have 3.)

My suggestion is to visit singly (or at most 3 avatars at a time) and explore on your own. Look for how easy it is to find information and how good the teleport system, if any is. The sims, on the whole, will probably not be up to CDS standards on builds or landscaping, so PLEASE remember that education is their primary function. And that we would not see any other sim from CDS. I'll be interested in your experiences.

The main discussion of this opportunity is found here: https://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?t=9910

THE LIST
Caltech / Virtech (RL University)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtech/61/55/37

Community Virtual Library / Cookie http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cookie/155/129/21

NOVA (North Virginia Community College) http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/N ... /11/187/22

Infolit iSchool / VWER (University of Sheffield, London ) )http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/I ... 113/189/22

Genome Island http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Genome/115/149/52

Rockcliffe University (SL based institution)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/R ... /160/88/26

Nonprofit Commons http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/P ... /94/128/25

[Rosie Gray]

Thanks, Kyoko. I look forward to visiting some of them.

[Indigo]

I had a free hour or two, so I took a gander at the list. My thoughts on each of them:

Caltech / Virtech (RL University)
One of the best of the bunch. The design of the sim was easy to navigate via walking, but they also had a teleport system in place to get you where you needed to be quickly. They had a balloon ride to look over the sim, although I did not take the time to experience it. The sim is not designed for residents. They dedicated all the buildings to small conversation locations with one larger amphitheater for lectures of a standard classroom size. I discovered a cave with the skeleton of a dead student who was studying their physics too much! Links to Caladon and Rockview were in the main square for newbies to find tutorials. I felt comfortable there.

Community Virtual Library
As a poet and writer, I could dig this place. It seems fairly active and had several people active on the sim when I visited, which is a good sign. It is the home of Wolfie's Poetry Surf, which is a popular reading venue in the SL poetry community. The design is haphazard. It would be easy to get lost on the sim. However, there does seem to be a host of activities planned there. I did not see any living quarters on the sim. This is one that I will be returning to in the future.

NOVA (North Virginia Community College)
I didn't stay long. The build and design was extremely out of date and the place was empty when I visited. It did not leave me with a good impression.

Infolit iSchool / VWER (University of Sheffield, London )
I am familiar with this university and their library in RL. It is a place where my speculative poetry friends all aspire to have their books. Their sim was modern and beautifully crafted. It seems a place for students to relax and gain general information about the university. I discovered classrooms and professor offices tucked away from the main complex.

Genome Island
Another sim where the coding was somewhat out of date. However, I found the design easy to navigate and explored easily. The sim is focused on teaching about genetics and little else. I'm not sure how popular it would be to anyone outside this field, but it was an okay experience.

Rockcliffe University (SL based institution)
I was not impressed with this sim. It seems empty and out of date. There were no signs that anyone had been there recently. I checked out their library and discovered copies of books from the Caladon library for the most part. Nothing new and most of the interior of the library was empty walls. No residents live there.

Nonprofit Commons
When I first arrived on this sim, all I saw were empty buildings and simple landscaping. There was no one else on the sim at the time I visited. As I explored, I began to discover filled buildings, each one dedicated to a cause or non-profit organization. In the end, I found myself intrigued by all the messages I found there. I checked out their blog and their last main event was in last July, so fairly recently. Navigation was difficult. There was no teleport system and not all parts of the sim connected. I had to fly over a river or two in my explorations. However, I like the idea that they offer free building space to non-profits on application and they seem to have activities going on. They would be a good partner for CDS. It is a place I will keep in my notes for a possible return one day.

I hope that this will be of help to everyone.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

Thanks, Indigo! I have not had time to do any exploring at all, and your summary of your observations was very interesting and helpful.

[Tor Karlsvalt]

Thanks Indigo,

I also visited the sims. I had much the same impression of the sims as Indigo. I can add that most of of the sims are a single full region. One had two regions and of course Rockcliffe was the largest with four regions. If the Eduland area is 40 x 40 regions, there might be quite a lot of room in the area. If these sims are representative we will be on the large side among this group. How regions would be situated will probably depend on who wants to move to the area and how Linden Labs wants the sims clustered. None of the islands were residential. Nonprofit Commons seems to be similar to a residential sim as individual organizations each had a parcel with a house or building.

I did find a long YouTube from September 2021 where the Virtual World Education Consortium goes into a lot of detail about their focus. About midway through the participants walk around the VWEC site (not Eduland) to show the portals used from the VWEC Pavilion to the the member organizations. The hub island might be totally different of course.

Tor

[Kyoko]

Thank you both for visiting the listed sims and for sharing your thoughts. Much appreciated.
I agree on the whole with your assessments.

The Virtech region is being referenced as a model for "Eduland's" Welcome Center, which has just had a terrain map laid down (the raw file created by Wordsmith Jarvinen) and a very preliminary indication of what resources will be where. Wordsmith and actuality (an architecture professor from Syracuse University) have done the initial work there along with Dodge Threebeards (love that name!) who has done the preliminary layout. Delia Lake will be on of those working on the landscaping. A prelimiary version of the sim will be available sometime before after mid-March

Two things to remember. These region's focus is on education, not cutting edge building. In the case of Rockcliffe, there is a shortage of signage at the main sim, I agree, but the build is clean and attractive. Also the traffic varies widely depending on whether classes or events are being held. In addition to classes, Rockcliffe also houses Spirit Dance Company. (If you haven't seen them perform do! They are excellent.)

The other Rockcliffe sims have better signage.
The Gateway sim is for the upcoming conference march 31-April, "Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education." http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/V ... 100/128/24 (photo attached) https://www.vwbpe.org/
The Rockcliffe Village houses parcels for various educational institutions describing their Virtual offerings, as well as builds giving the sim a "village feel" http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/V ... 100/128/24 (photo attached)

Looking forward to comments from other CDS visitors to these sims.

[Lilith Ivory]

Visiting the Eduland locations felt like traveling back in time to my early years in SL.
But I don’t want to comment about the look of those regions as in fact it does not matter - as long as we don’t get directly connected with one of them. I just hope the new Welcome Center will look a bit more 2022 like than the rest of Eduland
Thinking of how stunning CDS looks compared with the other Eduland regions I had to grin. And I remembered how happy I was as a Newbie when I found the first good looking region in SL. If I was a student or a Prof I’d know where to spend my spare time

[Kyoko]

I can guarantee that the Welcome region will be at least 2021 LOL

We have experienced terra-formers, landscapers and a RL architect involved. And everyone on the team understands that it needs to be beautiful both as a sim and with signage and teleports that are legible and consistent. I will be among the first to make loud noises noise if it gets flattened or ugly, but I am sure not alone. We know what the stakes are here.

We will not be connected to another region/estate unless we (and they) were to choose to.

And thanks for your comments Lilith.

[Rosie Gray]

I had a quick tour around the Eduland example sims as well, and realized that I had actually been to some of them before. I do agree with Indigo and Lilith's assessments about the way the regions are built, but as we know, that's not their focus. Several of the regions I had been to before, and I remembered playing with some of the genetics games some years ago that I found quite interesting.

It does still make me wonder though, with our association with Eduland, how much serious interest we might gain from individuals looking to put down some virtual roots. When I was touring around, I saw a group of mostly long-time SL residents at a poetry meeting in one region, a couple of random people dancing on a sky platform in another (where I received a proposition), and nobody at all on all of the other regions. Of course I know that scheduled events will bring people to those regions, but will they be curious about us enough to come and have a look, and will they be interested in buying land and becoming a citizen? I'm sorry to say, but I really doubt it. It's not that I think educators and students wouldn't like the CDS if they spent the time to come and investigate, but I do doubt that most of them would be interested in having a 'Second Life' outside of using the educational facilities. The reason I think this is that a) there is so little interest in most of the educational sims in investing time, energy, and money into upgrading their regions to something approaching a 2022 level, and b) so many of the educators don't care enough about the SL world to invest time, energy, and money into customizing their avatars. So many seem content with the default avatar they started with back in 2009 or whatever, or simply the way they first created them 10 years ago. The reason this matters to us is that what we have to offer is not only based on being a democracy, but on caring about what our regions look like. The very reason we have many of our laws and discussions in the CDS is about the curation and management of our graphic environment.

Don't get me wrong - I am not against this proposed move, but these are my reservations about it actually being much of a bonus to us. On the other hand, I do think we could be a bonus - almost an anchor - to Eduland.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

Very interesting points, Rosie, and after reading these travel reports, I also wonder whether we are offering more of an advantage to others than they might offer to us. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but if the idea behind the proposed move is to increase our residency, how likely is that to happen? I hadn't realized at first that these other potential Eduland members put so little emphasis on offering residences like we do.

I guess the thing to do is to consider all this without raising our expectations and/or hopes too high. It sounds like we may attract visitors (as opposed to potential citizens), but is that enough on its own to justify a move? Maybe it is.

[Sudane Erato]

Excellent meditations Rosie. Thank you!

From my POV, the bottom line is new citizens. And the concept is visibility by association. Of course none of the other estates there have an emphasis on residencies and a deeper engagement in SL life... their focus is purely on the educational mission that drives their RL institution (and justifies that institution's expenditure of money in SL). Our focus is entirely different, which is why Kyoko has had to jump through hoops to show our appropriateness to this project (and I must add that that is with Madori Linden's support, who initially proposed that we explore this connection).

But I take a special note about Rosie's last thought... that the CDS could be a bonus, almost an anchor, to Eduland. YES! And if the university presence grows in SL (SL used to have a huge university presence, but typically abysmal policy decisions by past LL administration drove them all away...), the idea that CDS might be a focus... perhaps a grounding in the reality and potential of virtual world for the institutions of ideas... that's very exciting. And might well lead to a great expansion of people interested in digging into the SL experience, buying land, establishing residencies.

The bottom line is new citizens. Sorry to be repetitious. It would make perfect sense to enter into an engagement with this project with a timeline in our decision. We decide to engage, with a built-in review after five years. If after 5 years we decide that the detriments outweigh the benefits, we disengage. At worst this would simply mean moving 6 sims elsewhere.

I'll place my money that we decide to remain.

Sudane......................

[Kyoko]

Thank you Sudane. I think the key is that "EDUlanders" that become Citizens are more likely to be interested in our working democracy.

I wrote the following before seeing Sudane's post, so forgive any overlap
--------------
Thank you all for your responses.

Wordsmith (who still lacks forum access) sent me some items I had neglected to make clear, or hadn't remembered, which I hope will help you see some of the advantages for us. We both believe that the upside for CDS is there.

First:
"The focus of "EDUland"is not just to move current educational sims into the reserve, but to create a community acceptable and attractive to educators and education administrators. Part of that plan is to include places that both provide residences and are communities with educational interest." (that's us--k.)

Second:
Wordsmith also suggests you look at the adjacent regions for Stanford University Libraries and San Jose State University's School of Information Science, aka iSchool. (I was having trouble locating them--k.)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/S ... 162/227/33
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/S ... /124/61/33

Third:
"Non-Profit Commons has had activity more recently than last July. We (Word and I) were both at the non-profit harvest last November , doing quick presentation on Oxbridge and CDS, respectfully., with a full schedule of other place representatives. As I recall, the NPC has quarterly parties."

Fourth:
"The Education Reserve has 5029 sim slots". (So plenty of room. Each region/estate will have a 2 sim buffer surrounding it.)

Fifth: From Kyoko:

As I have stated before, we will get more traffic due to the sign and teleport to CDS on Welcome Island. There is already interest in student and other groups scheduling visits, the students with their faculty.

The opportunity encourages us to focus on on who we are, a working democracy with educational interest, and places CDS with people who share many of our values. (As tempting as the Blake Sea may be, it is less likely to bring us Citizens who will take an interest in our democracy, which is our reason for existing.)

Developing a few events with an Educational focus will help us increase our outreach.
(see our document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y1d ... sp=sharing ) There may well be collaboration with the other institutions down the road.

There will be a joint calendar of events for all institutions in the Educational Reserve.

I hope the above helps with your concerns.